Quote (thundercock @ 27 Jun 2021 06:23)
Do you see how ridiculous that is? If the Democrats have a larger base, then they deserve to govern at the national level. There's no reason why Republicans can't chip into the Democratic base. There's simply no incentive for them to do so because they can win with minority coalitions. Once they start consistently losing elections, they'll have better ideas because they'll be forced to. The same principle applies to Democrats which is why they are trying so hard to distance themselves from the AOC types. The AOC types aren't popular enough to win nationwide.
What an unsophisticated take. Democrats have the larger coalition, but it is more fractured and contains a larger share of low propensity (and probably also of low info) voters than the more coherent GOP base. That's the starting position in most races on the national level or in swing states: Democrats have the higher ceiling, but it requires them more effort to actually turn all of their base out. Assuming super high turnout like I did in my hypothetical scenario eliminates this drawback of the configuration of the Dem coalition.
In reality, turnout hovers between 40 and 70%, and in this range, Republicans are still very much competitive.
The problem is not with Republicans being unable to chip into the Democratic base - the crux is doing so without losing parts of their present coalition in the process. This type of zero-sum voters swap occurred during the Trump years. In 2016, the parties swapped some non-college whites for college whites. In terms of the popular vote, it was a wash, but it made the GOP coalition more efficient in the EC and the Senate. In 2020, Trump didn't get blown out because his (further) erosion among college whites was largely offset by all non-whites trending toward Republicans. 1980 was probably the last time there was a non-zero-sum realignment.
Also, let's just note for a moment that the opposite rarely if ever occurs. Democrats mostly dont even try to chip into the GOP base - they simply don't have to, they rather import their voters and wait for demographic change to do the heavy lifting for them. The backdrop of American politics is that the Democrats are constantly getting stronger without having to persuade any of the current voters.
This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jun 26 2021 11:04pm
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